


Devil's Ambition

by Hawkflight



Series: Lunar Stone [1]
Category: Final Fantasy IX, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood Magic, Elemental Magic, F/M, Nicknames, Past Torture, Summoning, Summoning Circles, White Magic, black magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkflight/pseuds/Hawkflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Magic bends to the stronger will, while the weakest is tugged into a grander scheme."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For The Weird Prompt Strikes Back! [Daily Competition] prompt: Final Fantasy
> 
> I liked writing the last one with these two so here's a short multi-chap on how they met and such. It's basically a prequel to Promist Desert.

Her fingers curled around the thick leather spine, pulling the book from the shelf only for it to slip out of her grip and hit the floor of the library with a loud  _thump_. A multitude of  _shh_  and swift glares were sent her way the following second before it was quiet again.

Luna bent down to gather up the book, clutching it to her chest as she stood up and walked down the aisle towards the back of the massive library so she wouldn't bother anyone. She found a desk crammed in the corner and placed the book on-top of it before sitting down in the rickety old chair. With a flick of her wrist, a wave of her wand, the chair straightened just enough so she would be certain it wouldn't collapse with her in it. She turned her attention to the book then: it had no author emblazoned on its cover, just a worn set of nearly indistinguishable letters decorating the dark brown leather.

_Quattour Elementa_

The Four Elements. Something the wizarding world didn't touch anymore considering the cloud of dust when she had set the book on the table. It was extremely old magic that didn't require a wand, and yet very few people looked back to what their ancestors had done in the time before transfiguration and the ilk. All the magic they cast now had some connection to it. It had to, but no one could ever pinpoint what it was.

For instance, you could create water with a wand so it was safe to say the water element was used there. As for the other elements though? The fiendfyre represented fire well enough: a blaze of colors, wild, destructive. It was actual living fire, but it was passed on as a creature rather than living flame. A summoned creature who's existence was speculated on, because unattended magic made it. Which begged the question of how this unregulated magic could create such a thing without a wizard there to direct it?

The answer was in this book - or rather a book with the same topic as this one - along with many others on those mysteries; she wanted to re-discover it. That wild magic of the elements and this was her first stop of many in her quest. She could hardly wait to see if she could even discover completely new creatures by becoming more in tune with the ancient magic of the earth.

Speaking of earth... She flipped open the book to the first page. That was the first element it spoke of: unbending, strong, flexible. It seemed hypocritical at first, to say the element didn't yield but then to say it could bend but it made sense. Stone itself was hard to break, but trees could be uprooted by a strong wind and there was natural erosion from wind and water that shaped the earth differently over time; it just took awhile.

It would certainly be an interesting element to learn. Luna tucked her wand into her robes before she began flipping through the worn pages; they were thin and nearly cracked at her touch so she had to take care with each page. Some of the letters in the words were faded and she would have to squint to see the curve of the line to distinguish which letter it was without resorting to guesswork. Something she didn't want to do unless she interpreted the words wrong and caused a wreck in the library.

That's partly why she had chosen the corner instead of the more inhabited areas of the library, and also because the librarian wouldn't allow a book in this condition to leave the library or else it might 'mysteriously' fall apart. In other words it might get ripped or spilled on, anything that would make it unreadable that couldn't be fixed with magic because of it's age.

Her finger stopped it's slow crawl just above the current page. It was talking about a spell now, conjuring earth. She gazed over the words, the main way to cast a spell back then when they didn't have wands; it was just the voice of the witch or wizard that controlled the magic. It looked simple enough, not something that would cause a ruckus in the library so she stood up, pushing the chair back.

Luna took in a breath before extending her hands in front of her, palms open in a cup as if she were catching raindrops. " _Egomet excieo lutum ex terra. A saeculo fragmen tarde moreretur._ " She watched as little grains of dirt appeared in her hands, stopping just before even one of them could fall out.

There was another step as well, to continue the casting of the spell though it wasn't required. With a grin at her success she closed her eyes and slowly parted her hands, letting the dirt tumble down to the floor. It could easily be swept up after her experiment. As she let the dirt fall around her she began speaking softly, " _Custos terra, afferte mihi nostra arenc solitudinibus. Calida et ardens acerrimi quidem bellator. Ego ad domum tuam."_

The sand around her lifted from the floor as she repeated the words again. She could feel the magic in the air, the small grains grazing her fingertips as they appeared around her, spinning slowly. It was working. It was really working! She grinned at the end of the last word only to get a mouthful of hair.

Her eyes shot open as she spat out the strands of hair from her mouth that kept threatening to jump back in as the air spun even quicker around her. Luna blinked through the strands of light blonde to the sand beyond that was now spinning madly around her. She couldn't see a thing beyond the multitude of grains, it was a sea of varying shades of brown and she was in the middle of it as the magic fluctuated around her.

She must have done something wrong for it to be reacting this violently. The words repeated again and again in her head as the sand slid across her skin, closing in around her every second. Luna let out a scream when she saw the first slash of red among the brown and could feel warm liquid trailing down her forearm.

It was a miracle when the sand expanded back out a moment later, whirling faster than ever until it exploded outward, away from her. The resulting wind tugged at her sharply and she fell to the floor.

Luna sighed softly as she felt the cool stone beneath her. She certainly wasn't going to attempt that spell again, not without some much needed supervision from another witch or wizard. Blinking to help get the dirt out of her eyes she stood up, brushing her hair out of her face so she could see clearly.

Perhaps she should go to a professor for some help with her project-

The earth rocked violently beneath her feet and she fell backwards onto her butt. "Ow," Luna muttered, placing her hand to the stone on her right. Stone? She glanced up blinking at the odd engravings along the stone where she had placed her hand. There was a circle near the middle, tilted up to the ceiling. It looked a lot like an altar, but without the candles. Instead directly above that stone was a circle in the roof that was letting sunlight down into the structure.

It was fascinating for sure, but... why was it here? Where was here?


	2. Chapter 2

A soft  _click_  echoed off the stone and she turned her head quickly to look in the direction the sound had come from. She could see an open door in the structure where more light was spilling in - considerably less since it was coming from the side - right onto the altar. A second later another click sounded, closer than before.

She pushed herself up from the floor for the second time in less than a minute and walked to the doorway, keeping a hand on the stone just in case the earth decided to move again. Luna blinked when she looked down the hall to see a man walking towards the shrine, toward her. At least, she thought it was a man.

His hair was long, a striking silver she had never seen on someone so young; reaching down to the middle of his back. A single feather, also silver adorned the top of his head. Along his shoulders and upper back was a violet mantle with a gold trim, steel shoulder guards resting on top of that. White sleeves flowed down his arms and she could see a flash of gold and violet wrapped around his hand, down to his wrists as he walked. A white robe hung rather loosely from the back of his legs, kept up by four straps wrapped along the back of his legs and waist, forming a codpiece. She could feel a slight burn in her cheeks as her gaze traveled further down to dark purple pants that started from his mid-thigh and continued down to his ankles, tucked into the shoes he wore. The shoes themselves were a solid black with gold buckles resting on top.

He looked like royalty.

Her gaze moved back up only to stop on light blue eyes that were staring right back at her. His lips parted slowly and she blinked when he spoke, "You're hurt."

Luna glanced down to herself, pinpointing the scar a second later. There was a cut along her right forearm and she recalled the stinging pain from when the sand was flying around her, the flash of red she had seen in the air a moment after. "That's just from the spell. I was conjuring the earth and it seems I made a mistake." The scar wasn't too deep, nothing she shouldn't be able to heal with a few conventional healing methods before using a simple spell to finish it. Her gaze moved back to him. "Do you know what continent this is?" She should really focus on getting back to Hogwarts; preferably before the professors noticed she was missing and she got in trouble.

"It's the Outer Continent," he answered, gaze still on her. There was something very odd with the way he was looking at her but she mentally shrugged it off. It was perfectly normal for someone to be surprised at finding a stranger in what she could only guess was a sacred place.

The Outer Continent though? "Is that fancy talk for Australia?"

"Is that where you're from?"

Her lips curved up and she laughed. "No, I don't have the accent for it." Neither did he from what she had heard. His voice was rich though, smooth and flowing like a river. She was having trouble determining where he was from or where she was for that matter. She didn't recognize the stonework from her studies. "What region are we in?" Perhaps she could locate herself on the map that way.

"The Kiera Desert, to the east of the continent." She bit at her bottom lip, still not recognizing a single place he was mentioning. It was almost as if he was talking in a completely different language, but she understood him; just not the locale. "Where are you from?"

Luna focused back on him at the question. "Britain. I was at the library in Hogwarts before coming here."

"Hogwarts?"

She paused a second before answering. He didn't seem like a muggle, he certainly didn't  _look_  like a muggle; she had to wonder just where she was again because his clothes alone seemed otherworldly. "It's a school for witches and wizards that are learning magic."

The man was silent for a time, just looking at her. "What's your name?"

Her cheeks felt warm an instant later. She had actually forgotten to introduce herself to him before asking all those pestering questions. "Luna Lovegood. My first name means moon. It's nice to meet you."

His head tilted slightly, as if he was trying to distinguish if she was lying or not. "My name is Kuja." His eyes lowered back to her arm and she almost pulled it closer to herself, away from his intense gaze. "Let me see it." Even though he didn't say what he was going to do she extended her scarred arm to him as he stepped forward, a hand wrapping around her arm at both ends of the scar before they began to glow. A soft golden light was pulsing from his fingertips and the palm of his hand, flowing to the cut and she watched with wide eyes as the skin closed over the cut. As if it had never happened. She hadn't even felt a tinge of discomfort throughout the short process.

"Thank you." Luna began to pull her arm back when his grip tightened near her wrist and elbow. She glanced up quickly, heart pounding hard in her chest.

He had leaned forward at some point as there was only a few inches of space between them and she found herself fighting the burning sensation in her cheeks. "You said you were from Britain?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"I've never heard of it. I think your spell backfired and you somehow ended up here. Why don't you come and stay at my home until we figure out a way to get you back to your own?" His blue gaze was locked on hers as he spoke in a tone as smooth as velvet, "If you would prefer to go on your own to the mainland of the Mist Continent though I completely understand."

She couldn't speak for a moment, voice stuck in her throat. Her own eyes were finding it impossible to even turn away from his own; so how could she even think of turning down his generous offer? "If it wouldn't be too much trouble for you I would gladly stay in your home for the duration of time that I'm here." The reminder from her mind of where that was surfaced once more and she asked, "Where is here?"

Kuja had just pulled away from her, his fingers uncurling from her arm to return to his sides once more. "Gaia. You're currently at the Earth Shrine."

Shrine? Luna glanced back over her shoulder to the stone. That made sense with that altar-like feature sitting there in the middle. A shrine also insinuated that she was in the middle of nowhere in the Kiera Desert. There had to be others as well, perhaps for the four elements. Yes, the spell must have gone wrong for her to end up here. "Gaia?" she asked, looking back to Kuja.

"It's the name of the planet."

Her lips parted slowly to from a small circle. No wonder she hadn't recognized a single location he had spoken of. She was on a completely different world! Something she was sure no other wizard or witch had accomplished. How often did you hear from other magic folk that they traveled through space? Besides a few in Saint Mungo's Hospital that even she couldn't deny must have dreamed it up.

"Luna?"

His voice jolted her out of her thoughts. "Sorry," she murmured, unable to stop staring at him; still trying to make sense of what he had just said. "I didn't know such a thing was possible."

"About what?"

"That magic could allow a person to travel from one world to another."


	3. Chapter 3

His lips pulled up briefly into a small grin, eyes sparkling with amusement. "Have you never traveled to another planet before?"

"No," she answered. Honestly up until now she hadn't even thought it was possible, but the way this man talked... it was like he had done it before. More than once by the tone of his voice. "Have you?"

"Yes, only to Terra though," he replied, the mirth now gone from his voice, lips no longer forming that grin. His eyes actually looked cold and she could feel a prickling sensation at the base of her spine. A single word was popping up into her mind repeatedly, just like an old broken record.

_Run. Run. Run!_

She shook her heard firmly to make her mind stop it's sudden and ridiculous notion. There was nothing here she needed to run from, absolutely not. It had to be the shrine, many people found them disturbing because of their solitary existence in an otherwise devoid place. Her mother had said spirits liked to gather there that couldn't pass over to the afterlife. It was just some of those pesky spirits that were making her feel this way. Not this man. Not Kuja.

"Terra?" she asked, just to get her mind off those thoughts.

His lips actually formed a thin line for a moment and she felt her shoulders lower in relief. Of course, he had only looked like that because of the mention of Terra. Somehow the other planet must bother him. "The planet where I was born."

"Why did you move to Gaia?" It seemed a simple enough question when she thought about it, but now that she had asked she regretted doing so.

The change in his demeanor was instant, as his shoulders slumped for a second, eyes darkening before he seemed to mentally shake himself out of it in the next moment. Instead his lips curled into some semblance of a smile that made her heart cry out for him. "We should get going if we want to make it to my home before nightfall."

His hand extended out towards her and she took it with a smile. "Alright." She was more than happy to drop the subject if it bothered him that much. "How long will it be before nightfall?"

"A couple hours."

Only a couple hours? Perhaps this shrine wasn't as remote as she first thought. She figured it was possible there was a town nearby that he lived in, along with whoever kept the shrine in good condition. "How are we getting there?" she asked as they walked down a single long hall. From what she could see there was no other doorways, it was a simple and straightforward path from one place to the next. Nothing like the layout of Hogwarts.

"Airship," he said it so matter of factly; as if it were an every day word that anyone would understand that it actually took an extra second for her mind to register such a word as foreign.

Luna stopped in the middle of one of the massive stone tiled squares in the hall to turn and look at him, finding herself nearly as confused when she first got here. "An airship?"

His footsteps had slowed a second after her own and he had turned his whole body to look back at her. "Yes." When she just stared his brows drew down for a second as he asked, "You've never heard of an airship?"

"No," she just blurted the word out, still staring at him with wide eyes. "I haven't ever heard of one or seen it 'cause..." Well, they simply didn't exist. Not in her world. This planet was so different from her own. What else didn't she know? What else could she tell everyone when she got back to Hogwarts? "It's a ship that... flies, right?"

"Yes," he answered her question slowly, head tilted at an angle.

"Wha..." This seemed like such a weird question to ask. Of course most of her fellow students at school would insist it was normal for her, Loony Luna but... She hadn't ever even thought she would be asking such a question in the future. "What kind of ship is it? How does it fly? Does it have wings? Or do you use magic?"

A small chuckle came from Kuja. "You really don't know, do you?"

"No." She bit at her lip a second later. Did everyone else know? Everyone on this planet anyways, not hers. She almost felt like she should know but she was at a loss. "Tell me."

"It's an airship." He gave a grin at her exasperated look. Kuja turned and started walking down the hall again, his fingers wrapped securely around her hand. "A steam-powered airship. It was actually the first of it's kind. You see, a few years back the only airships our world had was those with a Mist-engine and so if you used an airship to travel you could only do so on the Mist Continent. To travel anywhere else you would need to walk or get a ship that traveled on the ocean rather than the air. So no, magic isn't involved and it doesn't have wings or a sail of any kind, but it does have a few flags."

She could barely take her eyes away from him long enough not to go sprawling on the floor as the stone dropped and fell in it's routine pattern beneath her. Everything he said sounded so... out of this world. Out of her world. Flying ships? Without a sail and steam-powered? "What's it made out of?"

Kuja only chuckled at her question and gave her a look that clearly said, you'll see.

Luna turned her head quickly to look down the hall, as if it might be right there in front of her at that moment. She wished it was. It sounded wonderful. To fly wherever you wanted in the world because you had a steam-powered engine. She wondered what it felt like. Was it like a broom or-

Her mind went blank as she glanced up, stepping onto the first stone stair. Light was filtering down from above, making the stone around her glow. The smooth gray stone was slowly transitioning to a more natural brown rock, first appearing between the stone pillars that split the floor into sectional squares and then it was jagged, poking out from the wall, the steps becoming uneven beneath the soles of her feet.

In the next second she had stepped out of the cave-like opening to see a large tree off to the left, grass stretching across the ground in front of her to end at a curve of dirt. Further in the distance she could see other patches of grass scattered around the desert, much like an old quilt. Her gaze could only stay on the scenery for so long when she saw a flash of light to her right.

Luna turned swiftly and felt her jaw drop in the next instant.

The structure was massive, white and purple metal twisted into a shape resembling a tropical fish. It even had thin purple fins branching off from the main mass, a tail with short metal fins that looked to function much like a propeller. Plus it did have flags, two rising from beyond the main fin that was composed of white and black metal stripes along the top. Where the eye would be was an insignia of a three-pointed red star surrounded by a yellow and blue background, the blue curved much like a tomoe while the yellow simply followed the curve. The mouth of the ship was white, while the main body was a deep purple that practically glowed in the sun's light.

It was... "Amazing." She couldn't stop staring at it. This was an airship. When she had heard the word she hadn't expected this. She had expected a traditional ship and this was anything but traditional.

A dull ring sounded out from the ship and her eyes turned slowly as Kuja continued to lead her forward, toward the sound that she could now see came from a metal door sliding open in the airship. For a second she could see dark metal beyond the door, a thick metal grate forming the floor before the doorway was filled with a burst of color.

Her eyes widened as two men came sprinting down the metal staircase leading up to the door. They each had a similar outfit on, like a court jester from the dark ages. One was in a bright red jacket, a white heart on his left sleeve while a diamond was on his right. The other's jacket was a light blue, a spade on his left arm and a club on his right. Each had on a white buttoned up shirt, dark grey pants, white pointed shoes and a jester hat with their corresponding colors ending with yellow bells weighing the pointy tops down.

She nearly jumped when one spoke in a high-pitched voice, "You are back!" The blue one jumped in place after the announcement, hopping from foot to foot.

"Back you are!" The red one added on an instant later, but unlike the other this one didn't start jumping. Instead he cocked his white painted face at her, with two red dots of color right above his eyes that looked like an extra pair of eyebrows. "This one is who?"

"Who? Who?" The blue one hooted like an owl before jumping forward to stand next to the red one, staring at her. "Who is this one? The-"

Kuja's voice cut quickly through the air, causing the blue one to jerk his head back as if stung in the eye by a bee. "I told you to be ready to pilot the ship when I got back, not pop out and scare my guest." It was now that she noticed his grip had tightened on her hand in a steel vice.

She flexed her fingers slightly to draw his attention to them, smiling when his grip loosened enough so her skin could breath properly. "I wasn't scared," she assured him, since he had taken it so personally. "They just surprised me." Her gaze drew back to the two jesters a moment later. "My name is Luna. What's yours?"

"Zorn," the blue one supplied quickly before turning and running back up the stairs and disappearing into the ship.

"Thorn I am," replied the one in red, grinning with teeth bared to the sun. He hopped back from her and skipped up the steps into the ship humming a mess of incomprehensible words.

The moment they were gone from the doorway she turned to look at Kuja, her lips pulled up into a grin. "They're... unique."

Kuja turned to her, asking, "Are you ready to board the airship?"

With a nod of her head he led her up the stairs and into the large flying metal contraption, the door shutting with a dull thump behind them.


	4. Chapter 4

Her eyes widened upon seeing the inside of the airship. It was just as marvelous as the outside.

The outer side of the hall was stripped of the uniform black metal that she had seen before. Instead it was gutted much like a fish, the gears spinning freely inside the ship. The sound of metal grinding away surrounded her, along with an occasional whistle of smoke from somewhere deeper in.

This. All of this really was amazing.

She had never seen anything like it, and she had seen plenty of things her classmates didn't. Things they didn't know existed and now she was getting to experience so much of those things at once before anyone else. If she didn't know she was on an alien planet she might have mistaken this place for heaven.

"You mentioned before that you know of magic."

"Yes." She turned quickly to look at Kuja, unable to suppress the grin that was starting to become permanent.

He merely raised a hand - the same one he had just been holding her hand with - and motioned forward to the narrow passage ahead of them. "Come," Kuja said, walking forward and leaving her to follow along as he continued speaking above the whirring of the airship around them, "I find it a bit hard to believe that you know any magic, myself. Yet you say you were conjuring earth and then you appeared at the Earth Shrine; so I can only assume that you know what you're doing when it comes to magic."

"Well," Luna started out slowly, unsure how to respond to such a statement. It was phrased so oddly and she didn't particularly want to think it but he sounded almost... flippant when talking about her casting magic. Like he found it impossible to believe she was capable of such a thing. It didn't seem like him to be like that even after the short time she had known him. He was much too pleasant, like a gentlemen - or a prince - to say such a thing and mean it in that way. "Like I said before, something went wrong with the spell. It was my first time casting with one of the basic elements, and yes, I chose earth for it, but it was the best starting element in my mind. The book I had described it as being the easiest to control. Fire is much too wild for someone just dabbling in the ancient magics-"

"Ancient magic?" he questioned, glancing at her from over his shoulder. "Fire is hardly ancient magic. Many mages here use it on a daily basis to defend themselves from the creatures that roam this land or even for basic utility like making a fire. It's hardly a magic that is hard to control. The most wild of elemental magic would have to be thunder. It's fast and could leave you with much more than a burn to take care of if it gets out of control."

Thunder? Wouldn't that be a part of the wind element? "I could only imagine what handling a bolt of lightning must be like." Considering thunder was just the noise for it she could only assume he meant what came before the usual loud bang that rang out for miles afterward.

"It's really nothing special," Kuja replied, tone flat; but he raised his hand once more, fingers flexing as a thin stream of lightning dispersed from his thumb to connect with the tips of every other finger. The streams of light crackled as they continued jumping around above his palm, from one finger to the next.

Luna found herself staring at the display of magic as it danced right in front of her eyes. It was beautiful. Everything here was beautiful. "Is thunder a basic element?" It had to have it's own sub-category at the very least. She found herself regretting not reading the book through to it's entirety before trying any of the spells within. Maybe then she wouldn't have mucked up her first spell.

His hand clenched briefly and the sparks dissipated, leaving thin trails of smoke in the air. "There are four main elements when it comes to magic: black, white, blue, and sword magic. Black magic is used offensively and deals with the elemental magic: fire, blizzard, thunder, and water. White magic on the other hand is used defensively to heal and as support by putting up things like barriers. Blue magic allows a mage to 'eat' a creature's ability so they can copy it, like making earthquake or hitting with the strength of a goblin. Sword magic is just black magic refined for those that use swords and other implements to fight; for instance, it allows them to surround the blade in fire or lightning when attacking a creature."

The sword magic sounded a lot like her own, but without just the label of black magic attached to it. Her wand could do a lot more then just spout flames from it's tip. "So that's how magic works here?"

Kuja glanced back at her for a moment. "No. It's simply how magic works." Luna blinked, shaking her head as she tried to discern what he had just said. He stopped in his tracks a moment later though and she nearly bumped into him with her head clouded by all the thoughts running through it. She managed to get out an apology while watching him twist a handle to open up a door, a series of metallic clicks coming from beyond it. "Why do you refer to it as ancient magic?"

The question startled her all over again and she glanced to him, stepping through the door a moment later when he motioned her inside. "Because that's what it is," she began, trying to figure out the best way to explain her own brand of magic to him. The magic she had grown up with. "In the wizarding world we started out with the elemental magics, but then we moved onto things like alchemy and transfiguration. Now a days alchemy is referred to as potions where we simply mix ingredients together to make a substance that could do a number of the things you mentioned or do something as incredulous as faking a person's death." Luna paused long enough to sit down on a plush couch, watching as Kuja sat on a similar comfy looking chair across from her after having shut the door. "Transfiguration can alter the form or appearance of an object, like changing a tea cup into a mouse," she continued. "There are many other forms of magic as well that do a variety of things like looking into the future or defending yourself from dark magic. Transfiguration is the one I would use now to conjure the earth, but I wanted to study the ancient magics and do it the way my ancestors did years ago before we used wands-"

"Wands?" Kuja was staring at her with such intensity that she found her jaw locked for a number of seconds. "What's a wand?"

She had to bite on her lip to stop the cold shiver that had suddenly run down her spine. "A wand?" Luna shifted on the couch for a moment before locating her wand in one of her pockets and pulled it out from the depths. "This is a wand." She presented a thin piece of wood to him, gaze flickering between him and the wand as he looked at it with a critical eye. "It's what we use to cast those spells. It's not absolutely required, but when you're learning it helps direct and control the magic. That's not to say there haven't ever been accidents." She could clearly remember quite a few fires starting in her years at Hogwarts when something went bad. The main reason most people found the element so wild even now she supposed. "We also say the spell when we cast it as another method to control it. Usually the two are used together, but once you know a spell well enough you can drop one or both and still be successful at it. It's a lot more common for people to stop saying the spell and just using the wand though when casting a spell."

His brow rose slightly. "A twig helps you cast magic?"

"A wand," Luna corrected, not that it made much of a difference apparently in his eyes. She supposed if she had just heard it herself it would sound equally ridiculous as it did to him at this moment; considering he had controlled lightning without speaking a spell or waving a wand. He must see it as an accessory to her magic more than anything else.

Kuja leaned forward, plucking the wand from her fingers and bringing it up to his face, looking it over with ice blue eyes. She watched silently as he weaved his fingers around it, as if looking for something. "Surely there's a spell on it that makes it more like metal, no? Unbend-able."

She bit down on her lip simply cause there wasn't and if he made one wrong move it could snap. "Please be careful with it. I don't have a backup on me."

"No?" He glanced over at her before his attention was drawn back to the wand in his hands. "Your magic," he began in a sort of low drawl. "It's very delicate, is it not?"

His hands clasped together towards the middle of the wand and Luna practically leaped forward to grasp as his wrists. "Please, don't do that."

"Do what?" he questioned; a small gleam in his eye.

"Snap my wand. I need it to get back home."

"Do you?" Kuja stood up, causing her fingers to lose their grip and slip from his skin. "I have a theory. If I may?"

That chill was running down her spine again and suddenly she wished she had listened to her mind before when it told her to run. She was in a small room at the moment, there  _was_ no place to run and she certainly couldn't leave without her wand. "The theory doesn't involve breaking my wand, does it?" she asked, the corners of her lips tugging up into an awkward smile. Surely he couldn't be planning to do something with it; like breaking it.

His lips simply curled up into a smile though at her question. It looked like a genuine smile, but now she was no longer certain what to make of him. If she should trust this beautiful stranger. Still, did she really have anything to lose by letting him try some theory? He hadn't broken the wand before when he had the chance.

"Okay. What's the theory?"

"You." She blinked, confused as he leaned forward, resting a hand on her shoulder. The same hand he had used just minutes ago to conjure lightning. Luna had to force herself to stay still rather than back away. She needed that wand, whatever this was she could deal and once the airship landed she could make a run for it.

A soft glow came from the hand, not golden like before but white. It weaved itself around her upper arm and his hand, a stream of magic moving back and forth. Then she felt it, her limbs becoming heavy even though she was sitting on the couch. Her eyelids threatened to flutter close and she had to fight to keep them open, to keep an eye on him as her whole body became drained of energy.

He withdrew his hand moments later, the light no longer pulsing from his palm, but she had seen the flow of the spell. It had been redirecting her energy - her magic - to him. "Sleep well, moon girl." Kuja was grinning when he turned and walked out the door, taking her wand with him.

When the door closed behind him she could see the metallic pieces clicking back into place, locking it just before her vision went dark.


	5. Chapter 5

A thin line of light cut into the darkness as her eyes slid open, the light becoming brighter and Luna immediately shut her eyes again to hide from the harsh light. She might have drifted back into the soft darkness if not for a series of loud metallic  _clanks_.

Her eyes opened slower this time and she shifted on the soft cushions, looking to the door as the gears turned. "Ku-ja?" her voice cracked when she tried to speak. Was he coming back in to explain himself? To tell her the results of this theory of his? The same one that had nearly instantly knocked her out.

She would like an explanation of some kind so she could figure out what was going on for once after getting here. He had been so nice to her before doing that, sapping out her energy. If she knew why he did it then she wouldn't have to feel this sense of betrayal in her gut. She was ready to accept an apology or anything that could rationalize what he had done. Because surely it had been for a reason? No person could do something like that without one.

"Sorry is Thorn."

"Kuja is busy with his tests at the moment," Zorn added a heartbeat later.

"Tests?" Luna asked; laying a hand on her forehead when the room spun as she tried to sit up.

"Magical Tests with the magic of the Mist and your own." At least Zorn was explaining the test in a way, she just had no idea what he was talking about. Mist? Kuja had mentioned airships powered by Mist but he never said that it was a magical element and why was he testing it alongside her own magic? What was he hoping to achieve? She would need to ask him all these questions and more when she saw him again.

"Yes, yes," Thorn tapped from foot to foot much like a ballerina to come to a stop in front of her. "Escort you to your room, we shall, yes? Moon that was summoned."

Summoned? "What?" Luna blinked as her gaze settled on Thorn. "I got here by accident from miscalculating my own magic. I wasn't summoned."

"Summoned you were!" Thorn threw his arms up into the air. "From up, up, up! Descended angel of the moon!" Somehow she thought the words would be a lot more charming if Thorn wasn't grinning from ear-to-ear in such a mouth-splitting way.

"Magic bends to the stronger will, while the weakest is pulled into a grander scheme," Zorn added only to heighten her confusion. Was he insinuating that her magic was weak? Compared to what? To-

Her eyes widened. "Kuja summoned me here?"

Zorn only paused, tipping his head to the side to look at her critically. She felt like a piece of fruit. "You were summoning to, were you not?"

Luna shook her head quickly, but stopped a moment later when the world attempted to flip itself over on her again. "I was conjuring the earth. I wasn't trying to summon anything but dirt."

"Conjuring is another word for summon," Zorn said, rolling forward onto his toes.

Luna sunk back into the couch. "Well, yes, but-"

"Moving destinations you were. Moon trying to go elsewhere." Thorn was jumping in place now as he spoke, "Magic clashed and pulled moon to shrine of earth it did."

"I wasn't..." Luna began only to stop short. Maybe she had been trying to move her own location when she spoke that second spell. It was in Latin and was old, she could have mistranslated it in her mind. But then the only question left wandering her mind was, "Did he plan it? Did he plan to take me from my own planet and bring me here through that spell?"

"Intentional it was not, " Thorn confirmed for her a moment later, ceasing her fears.

"Kuja only meant to bring an item forth or something that would help with his research," Zorn added.

An item? Was that why these two had come flying off the ship when it was her? A person instead of an item. This research had to include that theory of Kuja's about her. It involved her magic, they had said. Her energy.

"Moon room, now?" Thorn had resumed his ballerina-esque tapping and was reaching out towards her with a hand.

"Uh, sure." Luna took his hand, standing up from the couch and letting her bare feet touch the cold metal of the floor. Zorn had gripped her other hand an instant later and they took her from the room, helping her down and off the ship into a vast cavern that looked to be carved from the stone and dirt around it.

They must have landed at Kuja's home while she was asleep. She had flown on the ship and hadn't even been able to go outside while it was in flight. It made her feel a tinge of disappointment but perhaps Kuja would take her back on it later after he was done with his theory and they had spoken about it that is.

Luna slid her hands from the jester men as she walked alongside them, glancing up and down the castle as she twisted through the hallways, moving up and down staircases. Everything here was so grand, so bright. The only thing she found remotely odd was two statues that looked like hunched over gargoyles: the stone a dull grey, their sharp teeth exposed, hands forming talons, sitting on raised stone slabs. There seemed to be replicas in multiple rooms or they were following her progress through the place she was quickly beginning to think of as a palace.

"We are here," Thorn announced, stopping in front of a door.

She raised her gaze to see a silver door inlaid with chips of glass forming the image of a pond in a grassy clearing. Then her gaze moved to the raised onyx to the right of the door, where the door knob was. Luna took a hasty step back as a similar onyx pattern was along the wall right next to the door, obviously meaning to connect together as a complex locking mechanism. "What-"

"Inside you go," Thorn said as the door swung open inward. Zorn had taken a hold of her wrists before she could back up another step and even begin to run down the hall. Hadn't she told herself she would run when the airship was landed? Why hadn't she listened to herself?

"Go." Zorn shoved her forward through the open door.

Luna stumbled forward, reaching out for something to anchor herself with for her fingers to skim through air and she crashed to the floor. The thud of the door resonated behind her and she turned swiftly to look at it, but she could already hear the locks closing, keeping her inside.

She scrambled up from the floor, trying to remember the brief flash of the mechanism that she had seen. Her hand reached for her wand only to freeze in the air. Kuja had taken it with him when he left her in that room on the airship. Probably to help him come to a conclusion on his tests. "Let me out!" Her fists hit the metal and she winced at the contact. "Zorn! Thorn!"

"No can do until test is finished!" Zorn yelled right on back.

She could hear Thorn's laughter follow those words through the door. "Moon trapped, in the pond, all wet and unable to fly. Fly, fly! Home is distant, home is here! Forever moon shall be in pond, quivering from the cold. Until moon is gone. Gone, gone! Lifted up piece by piece into the air. Air, air!" Thorn sang from beyond the door.

A shiver ran down her spine at the words. Did they plan to kill her? Was Kuja going to kill her? She didn't fancy being evaporated and she certainly didn't like the way it sounded similar to what Kuja had done not long before. Would he continue to take her energy until there was nothing left for the sake of his tests? Until she died?

"Please, let me out!" Even though it sent a spark of pain down her arm she slammed her hands against the door.

"Run you will!" Thorn yelled back.

"I won't run!" Luna promised, banging her hands continuously against the door. This reminded her too much of being in that dungeon. The Malfoy's dungeon during the war and the torture and interrogation that had come with it. Would Kuja do the same to her? No, no. She had to calm down. He had already asked her questions and it hadn't been an interrogation then. He had been civil.

It was these jesters that had stuck her in here. Yes, probably on his orders, but maybe Kuja was just concerned that she would react badly to his initial test, and try - like the jesters said - to run. It wasn't even that bad, was it? Taking some of her magical energy to test. Even if it had knocked her out. Maybe that was just the exact amount he required. It did mean he was going to do it again. That was it. Positive thinking. No negative thoughts. Everything was going to be fine. This was all just a huge misunderstanding-

_"Moon trapped, in the pond! Pond, pond!"_

She shoved herself away from the door at the familiar cackle. Luna hit the floor again, her spine protesting as a flare of pain ran up and down it.

_"All wet and unable to fly. Fly, fly!"_

Luna slapped her hands over her ears to block out Thorn's voice as he repeated his earlier song.

She needed to think. Not focus on the disturbing melody coming from outside the door.

He hadn't planned it. This summoning that dragged her here to his own world. So he couldn't have any definite plans for her yet, could he? He was just conducting tests at the moment. But what if he needed more of her energy? Would he just come in and drain her again to disappear to wherever?

She bit into her lip. How could she be so sure that he wouldn't torture her just for fun like that woman? Like Bellatrix? She squeezed her eyes shut as the memories slammed into her full force.

_A knife was dragged over her skin as the woman leaned over, dark curls framing a pale face that contained a wicked grin. "You wish to support Potter and his cause, do you?" The knife tipped forward, digging into her arm._

A scream sprung from her lips and she back-pedaled quickly along the floor until she ran into something solid. Wood.

_She was brandishing a needle in front of her face, moving it toward her eye before pulling away quickly with a wide grin. As if she were a cat playing with a piece of string. The woman sat back on her heels then, picking up the wood eye ball next to her. It spun lazily in the palm of her hand, no longer moving swiftly and seeking out the unseen. Bellatrix jabbed it with the needle with a shout of glee. "Dead! Your supposed professor is really dead, the fool."_

Her fingers moved back over the wood, finding curves at the front and a block shape to her right. She slid along the edge of the bed to the side and kept going until her back hit the wall.

_"Shh, shhh," the woman whispered; a single finger resting on her cheek, the nail biting down into her skin leaving a sticky warm substance in it's path. "You'll have other purposes when the war is over. Your body is valuable to our cause." The breath on her ear traveled down to her neck. "If it wasn't I could have ripped you open by now, lucky one."_

She could feel blood running down her lip as she sat there: knees drawn up well past her nose, head dipped forward into the crook between her body, a shiver running though her and it wasn't from the cold. Not like what that song kept suggesting.

A series of clicks sounded and she tried to duck her head further down. To somehow bury herself into the corner between the foot of the bed and the wall. There was a pair of soft taps getting louder on the wood flooring before stopping entirely. "You didn't strike me as such a broken doll before."

Luna blinked, raising her head up to look past her knees at Kuja. "Did your theory pan out? Can I go, now?"

"It's compatible, " Kuja replied, but he didn't seem very focused on her question to give such a short answer.

"What's compatible?" Luna asked, sniffing as she raised a hand to get rid of the tears held in the corner of her eyes.

"Your magic and my life force." His eyes narrowed and he dropped down to the floor, reaching out toward her. Luna tried to back up only to be reminded by the rough stone behind her that the wall was still present. She had nowhere to run. His hands settled over her own and she watched as that golden light pulsed over them: she could feel the swelling going down, see the fade of the black and purple marks, the dull throbbing pain was gone in a second. His right hand moved up, a finger resting on her lip and she closed her eyes as the pleasant pulsing warm golden glow washed over the area, closing the cut on her lip. "If you hurt yourself like this again, I'll have to punish you."

Luna blinked, staring at him. "You're not going to kill me?"

"Kill you? You're no use to me dead, moon girl." Kuja withdrew his finger from her lip and she had to stop herself from begging him to do it again.

"Then you need me for more of your tests?"

"No." Kuja replied. "I already successfully turned your magic into a live giving force much like the Mist. It's a lot more effective though, even in small doses."

"Then why can't I go?"

"I need more of it, moon girl." He didn't explain further though, just raised his finger until it was pressing against her lips again and she couldn't even think of any other questions for him.

Her gaze dropped when his own got too intense, scanning along the floor instead only to stop short. What was  _that_? She had seen a fluffy white tip against the floor, reminding her of a cat but it had disappeared in the next second. Right under the robe that wrapped around Kuja's hips and with the way he was sitting down she could see a definite long curled shape pressed against the fabric. "You have a  _tail_?"

She noticed the narrow of his eyes just before she felt his palm settle down onto her skin, along her throat. A pulse of white energy was all it took to make her body sag against the wall, her eyes nearly closed as Kuja leaned in, breath that smelled like peppermint running along the cusp of her ear. "Mention it again and I'll give you one that's permanent," his voice came out in a low growl, making a promise as her eyes shut once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uber long prequel - End
> 
> Got a lot more planned for these two though. So this isn't the end! It's just the end of the beginning ;)


End file.
